Photo by foreverdigital/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Now that California has been ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to reduce its prison population by tens of thousands of inmates, how might this affect the private prison companies that make money incarcerating not only criminals, but also immigrants awaiting deportation?
The state has two years to comply with the high court’s order, intended to relieve a lack of adequate medical and mental health care for inmates in an overcrowded prison system.
Depending on how it’s done, the downsizing could be a windfall for the private prison industry – or not. According to a story today in the New York Times, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy “emphasized that the reduction in population need not be achieved solely by releasing prisoners early.” Other possibilities might include new prison construction – something that private jailers do quickly and cheaply – transferring more prisoners out of state, or using county facilities.
California has already made plentiful use of out-of-state private prisons, transferring thousands of prisoners to private jails in Arizona and beyond since 2007.
Even if the state opts to release prisoners rather than spend more on private contractors, the nation’s leading private jailers have a way of coming out on the winning end. When state prison contracts have dwindled in the past, the private prison industry has traditionally helped make up for lost revenue from federal contracts, notably immigrant detention contracts.
